Her name was Tina and she loved the idea of true love. She was young and beautiful, so she was told, with ambitions that were limitless and smiles that beamed of achievement. Perfection wasn't the goal, but she almost appeared to be because when he squinted his eyes there was nothing he could find except how in love she was.

Her kisses were passionate, her words as well and overall she was sweet. There was never a moment you had to question where her mind was. Her emotions read in her words and her voice, in the way her eyes gleamed when she held back a tear.

She was preparing for a life of living and loved being young. She danced with the music, she sang all the notes as if they were her own. Tina was loved by many, and she had loved a few, but there was only one Tina was crazy about.

His words gave her butterflies, his kisses kept her going. For months she was her happiest, constantly in a rush to be back to this one. Careless of those that wanted her or loved him because he was all hers and she was all his.

This young girl so full of dreams, couldn't stop falling. Swirling down a staircase of heartache for someone that slowly revoked the hand he extended. She chased the hand and kept pulling him back, going insane constantly saying "it'll go back, it'll go back" back to the way it was it wouldn't. He'd revisit her in her dreams but that was it. Their realities would never meet. A goal she'd never achieve.
her name was Tina, as sweet as can be.

"Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real."

Realize this thing has become greater than you.
Other hearts are on the line and either way someone is going to lose. The feelings I own wont be lost however. They're constant, when I dream, when I'm awake. You never leave my mind as you attempt to rid me of yours.

I'm told so many other things are in store for me, yes. There's a transition ahead I'll never imagine, yes. But, I look back and see the goodness and the potential greatness. I read the poems you inspired and wonder. It'll never be enough, my mind body and soul will never be enough. Realize my feelings are beyond you're control and look at this through my perspective. It's real, I'm in love, I won't just willingly let you go.

So many promising things the future holds, but something always brings me back to you.  Scared of going on knowing forever would exist without you. Everyone's so excited for the new change and growth that's bound to come, yet there's a fear in me that breaks inside when I picture a day without you becoming normal. I guess I'm more afraid of it not phasing you. You don't even realize the effect a person that comes so last minute into life can have until they're being taken away. Im not looking forward to missing you,  staying up all night wishing you were next to me, wondering if you feel the same way. All the change that's happening, but it can't change my love for you.

Just a boy, just an ordinary boy
And he spoke nothing short of ordinary words
But if he's so ordinary tell me why I fell so fast and never looked back?
It had to have been my smile that brainwashed me, it had to have been the sunshine that gave me a bias.

Now that I see him as beyond ordinary, I'm being forced to separate my mind from my body and heart. I'll smile as I'm being told I'm a mistake. I'll refrain from bursting into tears as my feelings are no longer spared, as parts of me hold more value than me alone. It'll be fine right?

But if his words are so ordinary why do they make me feel so low? Just the silence shows it all, his lack of interest almost. Just an ordinary heartbreak.

There he was, manipulating everything to be his way. We'd exist only under his rules, his conditions. Almost like a prenuptial agreement, but there was no monetary value that could replace what I'd learned or felt in the past year. He used to be everything without trying, and I could only want everything all the time.

There I was falling in love every minute. It's odd that a person can fall without ever looking back up to see what she's missing out on. But I was never worried because my heart would remind me that this was the feeling others looked for.

There we were on our diverging paths where my sun and your moon met on the rarest occasion. We abandoned the norms and created our own path, but eventually you started back on your own as I kept the faith and continued on ours.

Here I am, still in denial and refusing to abandon our path. Hoping maybe you'll take a detour back to where you left me. Here I am still falling in love every minute.

his phone rang just as my left leg casually layed on his shoulder, and my right leg over his lap. We were in the middle of laughing or just talking about something he was reflecting on, but nonetheless I listened. I traced the letters on his shirt with my fingers, often running my hands over his tummy and chest muscles. His phone rang just when our conversation was becoming honest and he poured his thoughts into me. He stopped in the middle of his sentence. I felt the mood change. "Who is it?" Although I knew.

Truth be told I always knew, and I wondered if somewhere in her pretty smile somewhere in this world did she as well feel the tugging that was us not being able to share. That ripping that was our hearts whenever we felt he was neglecting his duties, even if he was neglecting both simultaneously. I wondered if she could envision my smile and our laughter, if she would acknowledge our moments to be true. If she'd ever considered maybe love existed elsewhere.

Just as his face consumed wit humor and guilt through the awkwardness, I grew cold. It was as if the tugging had become direct. I felt used and abandoned although I insisted on him leaving. My voice changed as I went into a daze. Maybe the disarray of his belt and pants was unnoticeable, it was possible my smell hadn't smothered him. Meanwhile I sat in my basement branded on my neck. I was stuck with the evidence as he walked away a free man. Nothing connecting him to the scene when 30 minutes before we were connected, intertwined branding each other. Exchanging evidence that would die as it hit the air. Kind of like us. We'd die when reality hit. We only existed in the privacy of my home. That was the only time we could be real. That was the only time we were away from the phone calls, at least that was the only time I tried to be. Then that phone rings and just like that, it's as if we never happened.

I knew it when I woke up today.
It was something in the way the sky seemed to droop
The way the rain was barely there, but it was.
I knew it when the sweat gathered on my neck as I rolled over, wondering what the point of leaving my bed was

I felt it as the image kept replaying in my mind as I tried to scrub myself clean of it
It was in the way the notes in the love song didn't have their usual meaning, but seemed to be the explanation as to all the reasons I didn't want to leave my bed.

I knew it'd be one of those days I'd put myself on autopilot
Trying to silence my emotions from the world
because they wouldn't know exactly what it felt like
They wouldn't know the nausea that is this recurring image
the droop of the sky that makes my heart sag along with it
The barely there rain that brings with it barely there tears.

I knew it when my eyes peeled open today.
Another day passing without you.

He thought I wrote of fairy tales.
Tales of temptation that would lead to his downfall.
If only he saw that the tales were true and I
Never promised perfect
I never wrote of it either.
I wrote of my passion, and of my pain
Just showing how I felt
I never expected him to feel some type of way
He flirted with my fairy tale
But he was timid with the temptation
He feared the mess our now could make
How it could change, interfere, and influence his forever
Although he triggered it all
He pulled me in for the first kiss
He was his own downfall

She wrote her feelings out for you.
She wanted you to know how she felt at every minute of every day.
She needed you to see the pictures she painted of life so you'd never be left wondering
No matter where you or she went
Her poems would remain
Her art never revealed names
But you knew because the words always spoke to your soul
Whispering memories you tried to escape
She wanted to be able to leave this earth with no what ifs or doubts
She tattooed her feelings in a notepad and published them to the world.
Even the naked eye could see her heart on every page.
But only you knew where her heart was, only you knew the pictures she painted because you painted the picture with her.
If she left this earth today, she'd be at peace knowing a piece of her lies on this earth still
The piece that was written for you.

For a month a part of me was missing.
At least I thought.
So when I found it again, I was overjoyed.
Life made sense again because a void was filled.
But everything that glitters isn't gold.

You can't miss a part of you that was never there.
There's not a word for it either.
I tried to conquer the lexiconical gap.
So I watched as the petals grew crisp
And his words lost tenderness.
I relived the feelings of before that were  the reason I left.
I questioned why I ever came back.

I watched myself and my movements.
Wondering why I did everything with him in mind.
Just wanting to be seen as imperfectly perfect,
Be any and everything.
To others I was everything and more,
To myself I tried to be more, to be that part he never could seem to find in me.
But yet again the lexiconical gap stopped.
I couldn't miss the part of me I never had
Especially because I never knew what it was.

Summer came and went.
Our summer was the sweetest.
I miss what I actually did have then.
Those constant conversations, that eagerness and anxiety we'd get when too many hours passed without seeing or hearing from each other.
We did have that.
Now summer comes again and I'm faced with the
everlasting gaps that are me waiting to hear from you.
That denial I have when I finally do.

A gap, the lexiconical gap that may never be filled.
Not even Lexi can fill it, not even Lexi can keep you.

Each night after  you close your eyes to the day
But before you open your eyes to the dawn
Picture her running towards you.
Arms extended, playfully laughing a love song.
Can you hear yourself?
You're the sweetness in her laugh
The gleam in her eyes
The glow in her smile
Just ask yourself "why does she seem more beautiful than ever?"
She's a woman in love.

So basically the secret fear that I've been harboring and is preventing me from being completely positive is the idea that I'll never love someone as much as I love/loved you. While you're living in happiness and love, I'll still be looking comparing each one to you. I'll question myself should I give in and confess all my built up nerves, thoughts, and frustrations hoping you'll give me something that will guide me in the right direction. But I answer my questions with "it'll never happen. let it go. how much rejection will you take?" I don't know. I'm teetering between oblivion and rejection scared of what you'll think of me. And I cushion my potential fails with excuses such as "I just want to be friends" or "I just miss your conversation" to hide my love. I just wanna know what really happened and if I even matter. I know I don't not nearly as much as I used to. I wonder if you even think of me. Speak now or forever hold your peace they said. I'm afraid to speak because I fear a response that won't lead me to peace..

"And I know one day it'll end."

He was shocked that her faith was lost so soon.
But it was the truth.
There was no way of her keeping him.
He wasn't hers.
So she held each moment for dear life.
He spoke so many dreams into her  she almost believed it was forever.
She had no doubt that when the dark came to the light, they'd still be there.
Then it came. All those dreams became broken.
Their forever was cut short.
She knew one day it would end.

Wherever you are, no matter what you are doing
Or how frequently
I want you to think of me.
To take a breath and inhale our memories.
Become one with those summer nights
Relive those intimate conversations.
Hear my lips part as I smile or
Taste the candy of my mouth.
Imagine when you lay down it's me there.
Simply remember why you loved me.

And meanwhile she was on the opposite side of the screen dying inside.
So bold of a person to hurt her so bad.
So carelessly really. While he lived and loved as if she never existed.
But she couldn't forget his existence.
While he erased her touch, her lip prints.
She retraced his silhouette, tried to remember the feel of their intertwined ligaments.
He goes on realizing she was a mere speed bump, an interruption.
The last mistake of his youth.
And she sits wondering if she was in love alone.
Somewhere in wisconsin a little black girl dreams a love she will never know from a little black boy that left her to love alone.

Does time exist? Does it matter even?
If I loved him then, will I love him forever?
If in a matter of weeks he becomes a stranger
Did I ever know him at all?
As the days fade, and new memories are created
I wonder what he could possibly be doing that doesn't cross my world.
But then again we went 17 years without crossing paths.
What's another 17?
In that time will my love become dormant and
arise with the first sight of him?
I'll only know then. Hibernating.
Time waits for no one, but if it doesn't exist
I can be waiting forever subconsciously.
Never noticing until I see what I've been waiting for.
That moment when I come across a stranger with whom memories I share.

It's ironic that you come just in time each time.
Right when the sun comes back out
Right as the seasons change
Right as I'm returning back to myself
It's ironic that I taught myself to not feel you
But I felt you long after you left

So now after a year of stuffing the memories in the back of my cluttered closet, you peep through
Returning despite the spring cleaning
Not washing away with the April rain
My heart pauses, my smile widens,
I can't tell you I miss you
I've become familiar with you not being
around

But it's something in his conversation that lures me in and reminds me
We're different, but for that moment it's the same
Like summer again
The reason I started living on edge I guess
I won't say all the thoughts I wondered in the past year
All the strength it took during the first months
I won't relive the moment I let go
The vulnerability that led me here isn't here.

I want a break.
Just a day spent in silence, away from the world.
No one, not even myself.
I wish I could just isolate my mind from my body for just a day.
No one I'm forced to interact with, no one to give a fake emotion to.
For just a damn day I want someone to care about me. To see past the walls I build to meet their needs, and see I'm unhappy too. We're all unhappy.
I'm sick of being a friend.
I want to play the victim for a change.
I don't give a fuck about your problems, I have my own. But I take the time to make your problems mine to help you through.
Why can't I just be my own everything?
No one can care about me the way I do, or see when something is actually wrong. But how could they? I always seem so strong. Everyday is a different suicide note that I'm too cowardly to sign.
But lord knows I'm tired of hurting, stressing, settling.
Just tell me why my hurt matters the least when I work the hardest, give the most.
If this is what all of life is like, just drop me off here.
I'm dying in a self preservation society.
There's no one left to care about me, not even me.

There's just something in the sunshine.
Something that lets me know things will always be alright, no matter what.
It's the symbol of hope, that there is always a new day, a different tomorrow.
It washes a warmth of possibility over me.
A fresh start each morning, a different forever we're in search of.
Each spring that sunshine saves me.
Something in its rays that gives purpose to my words.
That warmth washes over me and gives me strength to press forward.

When I say "I'm tired", I really mean that my heart is tired.
I'm tired of smiling when I want to cry.
Tired of talking of how happy I am when in reality I can point out all that is going wrong.

When I say "I'm bored", I mean that I've grown bored with living day to day like everything is alright. I'm bored with the character I portray.

When I say "I'm lonely", I mean all the people around me aren't you so I might as well be alone. I don't see them because I rather see you. They're taking up space and time. Time of theirs that I'm wasting because I know no matter what they can't distract me from you.

Those poems painted pictures of everything I wanted to say, everything I actually meant.
But he never understood what I wanted him to see. He couldn't read between the lines. He couldn't hear the bleeding love in the notes I sang.

He couldn't translate.
We lost us.